A Hyundai BlueOn electric car is displayed at the Paris Mondial de l'Automobile in this September 2012 file photo. Technology innovations often take a long time to reach the mass market, Voelcker writes.

Christian Hartmann/Reuters/File

View Caption

They pop up like weeds, these "Electric cars are failures" articles--and you just have to keep killing them.

But he deems plug-in electric cars a sales failure--after less than two years on the market--because, he says, consumers don't want them.

In fact, most car buyers have no idea that plug-in cars are on sale at all. It's early, early days yet.

Lynch trots out several hoary old chestnuts: Batteries have been with us more than 100 years, electric cars failed in the 1910s, so why would this time be any different?

He apparently doesn't know that only in the last 20 years have we moved beyond lead-acid battery chemistry. Large-format lithium-ion cells, with four times the energy density of lead-acid, entered production just in the last few years.

Fifteen years ago, the 16-kilowatt-hour lead-acid pack in GM's EV1 weighed 1,200 pounds. That same energy content in the Chevrolet Volt's lithium-ion pack weighs just over 300 pounds.

The overall proportion of plug-ins in the global fleet will remain low over this decade; most analysts project that plug-ins will be 1 to 2 percent of a 100-million-unit annual global output by 2020 or 2022.

But if Lynch were to look out 15 years, he might gain a broader perspective.

First, the EPA itself has estimated that gasoline car prices will rise $3,000 in real dollars from 2012 to 2025 to meet new CAFE standards.

By 2020, gasoline cars will be more expensive, and gasoline will presumably cost more as well--thoughnew cars will use less of it.

Plug-ins already cost one-third to one-fifth as much per mile to operate as gasoline cars, of course, depending on your local electricity rates.

Meanwhile, plug-in electric cars will cost significantly less and they may also have longer ranges. Most analysts feel 120 miles of "real-world" electric range is enough to assuage range anxiety and meet drivers' daily needs.

As those two cost lines come closer--and then cross, as they inevitably will--consumers will start to understand that plug-ins can be viable alternatives to gas cars on the basis of purchase cost.

But technology innovations often take a long time to reach the mass market.

In the case of cars, they're often encouraged (or mandated) by regulation--as is the case for the first few years of modern plug-in electric vehicles.

But to Lynch's basic point, consumers will buy the car they feel is the best and cheapest way to meet their needs.

As electric cars get cheaper, and gasoline cars more expensive, that's exactly what will happen--perhaps 10 or 12 years from now, possibly sooner.

We might gently suggest Lynch take a longer look at the industry than simply scanning 22 months of sales.

If he did, he might come to a different conclusion.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best auto bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link in the blog description box above.